Avoiding Council Meetings is not right for Richmond Hill’s Councillor Castro Liu January 16th 2019 Opinion Letter Richmond Hill’s Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu has made a habit of avoiding Council
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Quebec television personality Eric Salvail has been arrested by Montreal police on charges of sexual assault.

According to the arrest warrant, he is being accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault and forcible confinement for events that occurred between April and November 1993. There is one alleged victim in the case.

Salvail, 49, turned himself in at a Montreal police station and was released on a promise to appear in court Feb. 15.

Avoiding Council Meetings is not right for Richmond Hill’s Councillor Castro Liu

January 16th 2019 Opinion Letter

Richmond Hill’s Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu has made a habit of avoiding Council meetings where critical votes are set to take place. It’s time for Castro Liu to be open to his residents on where he stands on the issues.

Many residents who were present at Richmond Hill’s town council meeting late last year on December 11th 2018 noticed that Ward 3 Councillor Castro Liu was absent from the meeting. The significance of this meeting was that a vote was set to take place about the Town’s Downtown Secondary Plan. Instead the vote was postponed to the New Year in early 2019. This result angered many town residents who believe that Richmond Hill is already behind its neighboring towns and cities when it comes to urban planning and infrastructure.

Councillor Liu then avoided another critical vote regarding the fate of controversial Ward 5 councillor Karen Cilevitz. Instead of voting for or against the motion which was set in place to suspend Cilevitz’ pay for a period of 90 days, Liu chose to skip the meeting altogether. Eventually, the present council members voted unanimously in favour of the motion to suspend councillor Cilevitz for bullying.

The fact that Councillor Castro Liu had run unopposed in the 2018 municipal election for the position of Ward 3 councillor does not mean that he cannot partake in a healthy debate. It is the obligation of any politician, including Councillor Liu, in a democratic system to effectively represent the residents who is accountable to. He has the right to his own opinion and to vote accordingly, and his vote should be based on his social conscience and the interest for a better future for Richmond Hill. Any part of Richmond Hill is a part of town of Richmond Hill and Ward 3 is not an isolated island. We are one town, and we have to fight for the future of a modern town.

The recent motion to suspend the councillor’s pay, based on the latest Town Integrity commission report on bullying, sheds light on the issue of ethics among Richmond Hill’s elected representatives. {1} Richmond Hill’s Ward 5 Councillor Karen Cilevitz was the subject of the Report published on December 7th, 2018. In the report, the councillor was found to be harassing, intimidating, and threatening local Richmond Hill musician Steffi Goodfield. The long series of harassing voicemails and text messages that were sent by Councillor Cilevitz to Goodfield began in December of 2017 over the name of a musical event being hosted at Richmond Hill’s Archibald’s Pub.

In her 2018 campaign for re-election as Ward 5 Councillor, Karen fell into further controversy due to her association with a local Richmond Hill Richard Rupp, who was in 2008 convicted in an Ontario court for committing tax fraud. {2} Mr. Rupp was hired by Cilevitz as her campaign manager. This raised many eyebrows as to why she had chosen to a convicted criminal to be in charge of her campaign. Cilevitz never addressed the doubts regarding Mr. Rupp during or after the campaign. In fact, during the newly elected council’s inauguration at Richmond Hill’s centre for the Performing Arts on December 4th, Rupp was invited as one of the councillor’s special guests and was given a special tribute by Cilevitz during her remarks to the town. This was further seen as an insult to the residents of Cilevitz’ Ward as to the fact that she was never transparent about her association with the convicted fraudster Richard Rupp.

The new Richmond Hill Council has to catch up with so many left over projects to improve the town. Therefore the constant interference by individuals who actions act as a distraction from the vision in place for Richmond Hill. The fact that the town of Richmond Hill has made national headlines recently in a negative light, due to the actions of Councillor Cilevitz, has been an injustice to the town’s diverse and hardworking residents. For Councillor Cilevitz to step down is the best option both for herself and Ward 5 residents as well as the town of Richmond Hill. Time for a municipal by election in Richmond Hill’s Ward 5.

The mistake of Canada MPs and Senators to travel to China amid detention of Canadians as hostage

Jan 6 , 2019-01-06
Saeed Soltanpour

Trip of 4 Canadian MPs ( 3 Liberal and One Conservative ) alongside two Senators ( one Liberal and One Conservative) on Jan 5 , 2019 to China amid of political tensions rising between Canada and China is a big mistake by Primer Justin Trudeau and Conservative leader Andrew Shceer . The pre schedule trip of Canadian politicians giving wrong response to China.
Timing of the trips shadow on PM Justin Trudeau and Her Foreign minster , Chrystia Freeland , claim on priority of Human Rights for the government. The trip is not at the best interest of Canada.
It looks Human Right is important as long as the other government is not powerful as China
While I support dialogue with governments but we can not leave our fellow Canadian citizens behind or scarifies our interest for economic or political benefit at the international crisis.
The authorization of the trip of back bencher politicians with little diplomatic experience to by PM Justin Trudeau was a big mistake , too. These politician not only will not be taken serious in Beijing but showing the weakness of Canada foreign policy .
Richmond Hill Liberal MP could stay out of this trip to show respect for all 13 Canadian detainees in China . MP Jowhari could should think twice as Canadians before be a foot solder for Liberal party to respect Canadian Liberal democratic values and Human RIGHTS.
Delegate to China :
Unelected Senators Victor Oh, Conservative and Sen. Joseph Day , Liberal and MPs Michael Cooper, Conservative, Geng Tan,Libera , Majid Jowhari, Liberal and Chandra Arya, Liberal,

The Mafia Reporter With a Police Escort (and the 200 Journalists Like Him)

By Gaia Pianigiani

May 20, 2018
ROME — For many of his days over the past four years, Paolo Borrometi has lived in isolation, though he is barely ever alone. He has not walked through a park or by the beach in his native Sicily for years. He cannot go to a restaurant freely, or to a concert or the movies. He can’t drive a car alone, go shopping alone, or go out for dinner by himself.

Before heading to work as a reporter covering the mafia, he starts each morning with an espresso, a cigarette — and his police escort.

Angering the mafia as a journalist in Italy makes for a lonely life. And yet Mr. Borrometi, 35, is in good company. Almost 200 reporters in Italy live under police protection, making it unique among industrialized Western countries, advocacy groups say.

“None of us wants to be a hero or a model,” Mr. Borrometi told an assembly of high school students on a recent morning in Rome, where he now lives. “We just want to do our job and our duty, to tell stories.”

Yet murders connected to organized crime are rising in Italy, the authorities say, and international observers consider criminal networks the principal threat to journalists in Europe.

“Don’t stop writing, Paolo,” read an email Mr. Borrometi received two days after he was assaulted in 2014 outside his family’s country home in Sicily by two men wearing balaclavas. “Our countries need free and investigative journalism. You have my respect.”

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The note came from Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was herself killed in a car-bomb attack last year, after exposing her island nation’s links to offshore tax havens and reporting on local politicians’ crimes for decades. When she died at 53, she had 47 lawsuits pending against her, including one from the country’s economy minister.

In addition to Ms. Caruana Galizia, who was killed in October, a 27-year-old reporter, Jan Kuciak, was killed along with his fiancée in Slovakia in February. He had also been investigating corruption with suspected ties to Italian mobsters.

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Students at the Terenzio Mamiani High School in Rome listened to a presentation by journalists about the risks of the profession.CreditNadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times
“There have already been two journalists killed by the mafia inside the European Union, both investigating mafia stories and stories that domestic governments were not looking into,” said Pauline Adès-Mével, who is responsible for the European desk at Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for press freedom.

“Italy is historically the country that has felt the mafia the most, and has a dozen of journalists under 24-hour police protection,” Ms. Adès-Mével said. “That doesn’t happen in other countries.”

Among those journalists is Lirio Abbate, a mafia expert with the magazine L’Espresso, who has been under protection for 11 years, since the police thwarted a bomb attack in front of his house in Palermo. Federica Angeli, a reporter with La Repubblica, and her family have been under police escort for five years. And Roberto Saviano, the author of “Gomorrah,” a best-selling book, movie and TV series about the Neapolitan crime syndicate, has been under escort since 2006.

For Mr. Borrometi, it took just a year of reporting on the secret businesses and clandestine political ties of the mafia in southeastern Sicily for his independent news website, La Spia (The Spy), before criminals menaced him. In five years, he got hundreds of death threats from local mobsters.

Mr. Borrometi, who trained as a lawyer, started writing for local papers when he was 17, inspired by a Sicilian investigative reporter, Giovanni Spampinato, who was killed by the mafia in the 1970s.

He started his own website five years ago. His first investigation, on mafia infiltrations among top officials in the town of Scicli, contributed to the government’s decision to dissolve city hall.

His articles pull no punches. They detail the connections between political powers and the mob, naming names, and accompanied by photographs. “People need to know who they are when they meet them at the bar,” he said.

At first, his articles prompted vandalism against him and late night phone calls. But things got physical after he began writing a series of stories that showed how Sicily’s largest fruit and vegetable market was controlled by mobsters.

LEBANON EXPELS BBC JOURNALIST FOR REPORTING FROM ISRAEL
After the BBC’s Mehrdad Farahmand interviewed Avichay Adraee, the head of the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Lebanon expelled him from the country.

REPORT: LEBANON EXPELS BBC JOURNALIST FOR REPORTING FROM ISRAEL
After the BBC’s Mehrdad Farahmand interviewed Avichay Adraee, the head of the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Lebanon expelled him from the country.
BY SAMUEL THROPE MAY 21, 2018 11:57

Farahmand, who has been based in Beirut as a correspondent for the BBC’s Persian Service for 12 years, has been reporting from Israel in recent days.
The Lebanese decision came in response to a video Farahmand posted to Facebook Saturday, Al-Akhbar reported.

In the video, Farahmand interviews Avichay Adraee, the head of the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. Farahmand translated into Persian Adraee’s message to Iranians that the IDF has no ill will towards Iran’s population and inviting Iranians to visit Israel.

VALLETTA (Reuters) – A Maltese court on Monday dismissed an attempt by one of the suspects in the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia to stop an FBI team testifying in pre-trial proceedings.

FILE PHOTO: People hold up pictures of assassinated anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia during a vigil and demonstration marking seven months since her murder in a car bomb, at her makeshift memorial outside the Courts of Justice in Valletta, Malta May 16, 2018. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi/File Photo
Galizia, an anti-corruption blogger, was killed by a car bomb last October. The bomb is believed to have been triggered by a signal from a mobile phone and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been helping Maltese authorities to solve the case.

Three people have been charged with carrying out the murder but police have not identified who ordered it. The three people deny the charges.

One of the three, Alfred Degiorgio, tried to have the FBI barred from giving evidence in the case on the grounds that it has worked with a court-appointed Maltese IT expert, Martin Bajada, who has a historic conviction for theft and fraud.

“Dr Bajada should never have been appointed in the first place and should never have been allowed to work alongside the FBI experts,” a lawyer for Degiorgio said, adding that his client’s rights would be prejudiced if the foreign experts were allowed to testify.

In her ruling, Judge Lorraine Schembri Orland described Degiorgio’s attempt to stop the FBI from giving evidence as “frivolous and vexatious”.

Maurizio Cordina, a lawyer representing Malta’s Attorney General, said the case was “a desperate maneuver by Mr Degiorgio to delay, if not block” the trial, adding that Bajada had simply gathered evidence and had not worked with the FBI.

The case against Degiorgio is built mostly around intercepts of mobile phone data compiled by the FBI and Bajada.

The FBI is due to give evidence in the case on Tuesday.

The Times of Malta reported that Bajada pleaded guilty in 1993 in a London court to charges of theft and fraud and received a two-year suspended sentence.

Europe’s clash with Trump over Iran nuclear deal is a durability test
Tone struck by Britain, France and Germany will be critical to future transatlantic relations

European leaders are determined to try to salvage the Iran nuclear deal even though this potentially puts them on a collision course with an uncompromising US president determined to confront Iran as the “leading state sponsor of terror”.

The clash represents a huge test of the durability of the surprisingly concerted alliance that Germany, France and the UK have managed to maintain in their humiliatingly fruitless bid to prevent Donald Tump from explicitly withdrawing from the deal signed by his predecessor Barack Obama.

The risk is that the unity forged by the European trio over the need to preserve the deal now falters as disagreements surface on how far they are prepared to antagonise a determined US president, not to mention Israel and Saudi Arabia, to keep the deal alive.

Cameroon radio journalist Akumbom Elvis McCarthy, who a military court ordered must be held for at least six months. Photo: ANA / credit withheld

JOHANNESBURG – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Tuesday demanded his immediate release of radio journalist Akumbom Elvis McCarthy after the Cameroon military court ordered that he must be held for at least six months.

Last month, on 10 April, a military tribunal ordered that McCarthy, a news broadcaster for privately owned Abakwa FM Radio based in Cameroon’s Bamenda region, be remanded in custody for a renewable six-month period while police investigate claims that the journalist aired secessionist propaganda.

READ: Ex-Cameroon minister arrested in Nigeria, extradited home

“Akumbom Elvis McCarthy should not have been arrested in the first place and should be immediately released without charge,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal.

“We condemn Cameroon’s use of a military tribunal to prosecute a civilian, which is in violation of international law.”